G06F 16/00 - Definition

Definition statement

This subclass covers:

Systems and methods for retrieving digital information stored in databases, data repositories or file systems, locally or remotely.

Details of the organisation and preparation of information for use during the retrieving of digital information, e.g. generation of indexing information or query formulation.

Details of data structures used for information retrieval, such as trees, lists or hashing.

Details of query processing and the presentation of query results, e.g. in textual or graphical form on GUIs.

Details of browsing digital information.

Details of architectures of databases, data repositories or file systems, e.g. physical, logical, virtual, central or distributed architectures.

Details of managing data stored in databases, data repositories or file systems, e.g. tuning, replication, archiving, synchronisation, concurrency control and interfaces therefor such as GUIs.

Details of optimising the storage and retrieval of digital information, e.g. de-duplication of stored data, application-specific caching and pre-fetching in file systems, (distributed) databases or web browsers.

Systems and methods for retrieving data from structured databases and for their management. Examples of such structures databases are relational, object-oriented, multidimensional, spatial, temporal and geographical databases.

Systems and methods for retrieving semi-structured data, e.g. XML formatted data or comma separated values.

Systems and methods for retrieving text, audio, image, video or multimedia data from databases or for managing document libraries

Systems and methods for information retrieval from and browsing in the World Wide Web.

Relationship between large subject matter areas

Content-based information retrieval in databases storing media data, e.g. audio, image or video data, involves the comparison of a search query with a corresponding representation of the data. The generation of the search query and the representation of the data can involve the analysis of the data and the subsequent low- and high-level feature extraction. G06F 16/00 covers aspects of the actual process of comparison, e.g. similarity matching. The analysis and feature extraction is covered by G06K 9/00, G06T 7/00, G10H or G10L depending on the type of data.

Distributed repositories involve the use of networks for data transmission. Specific protocols for information interchange, including on the application layer are generally to be found under H04L

Physical data storage details are generally found in G06F 3/06, G11B or G06F 12/00.

The mere use of databases in specific application fields (e.g. administrative or financial processing systems) is covered by the respective application field, e.g. G06Q.

References relevant to classification in this subclass

This subclass does not cover:

Informative references

Attention is drawn to the following places, which may be of interest for search:

Special rules of classification

1. For documents dealing with how a given type of data is retrieved or how the database or repository for this particular type of data is organised, classification should generally take place in the indicated subgroup for the data type as follows:

• In multimedia databases - G06F 16/40
• Geographical information - G06F 16/29
• Still images - G06F 16/50
• Structured information, records - G06F 16/20
• Unstructured text - G06F 16/30
• Audio information (e.g. music, speech) - G06F 16/60
• Video information - G06F 16/70
• Semi-structured information (e.g. XML, CSV) - G06F 16/80

2. If however more than one particular data type is described in some detail, classification under each of the corresponding subgroup should be considered.

3. If no specific data type is indicated at all, or an explicit hint is given that the disclosed mechanism can be used for retrieval of arbitrary data types, e.g. a list of alternative data types, and for "generic" data type use subgroups under G06F 16/90.

4. In the case of annotated data/metadata-based retrieval, the type of data used for the retrieval is sometimes different than the data type to be finally retrieved. E.g. associated images are used to retrieve text documents.

In this case, the classification should be decided according to the level of disclosed details concerning each aspect:

• according to the data type retrieved if the use of that metadata of different type is only casually described,
• according to the data type used for retrieval, e.g. type of the metadata if specific details of this use are disclosed.

In the cases where both aspects are well covered, double classification can be warranted.

Note: Many problems with generic data types as under rule 3 arise for documents describing querying systems/methods using metadata wherein the data type of the data finally retrieved is arbitrary or doesn't really matter. Using the above approach, these documents can simply be classified under the data type used for the retrieval and in the metadata subgroup under the generic data type subgroup. A similar approach can be applied in case of browsing a data type using a different data type.

For example: browsing a set of audio files by browsing through the titles of the files or through images representing the audio files is to be classified under ''browsing of audio data''. In case some interesting aspects merit also a classification under text, respectively image browsing, this should be covered by double classification. Again, classification under ''browsing of generic data'' has to be considered.